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Its been a while since I’ve done one of these.  Occasionally, I’ll have one of those nerd freak-out moments on how many potentially awesome books are coming out that week.  So, this is one of those times where I’ll share.

1. The Flash: Rebirth: So, this is when they bring back everyone, and erase the last death that literally meant anything in comics.  That’s fine though, considering this is being done by the fine team that brought back Hal Jordan in Geoff Johns and Ethan van Sciver.  It may be fan-service (God, you should have heard the 40-Year Old Virgins flip out over when Bart took over as the Flash, and wanted Barry back), but with a team like these two I think I can say that this will be delivered in a classy and beautiful way.
2. Seaguy: Slaves of Mickey Eye: Hell yeah.  Now if you want some mind-bending commentary on superheroes this is where you go.  I recently finished the first volume and thought it was humorous, thoughtful and beautifully drawn by The Other Side’s Cameron Stewart.  Have a couple of his designs he posted on his facebook.
3. Irredeemable #1: From Mark Waid and Peter Krause, this book is about a Superman-like character who eventually snaps and decides to just take over the planet.  Have an essay from Waid on the development of the book. This ought to be a real treat.

As the week goes you ought to look to what other people recommend. I personally like pretty much anything Graeme recommends, and Kevin too.

I’m going. Its at Webster Hall.  Have a sample:

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Jude Brearton

We played in the park. Had finger puppet theatre. His father and I philosophized on how the collective unconscious gives a kind of latent ability to be familiar with the slaughtering of an animal even if a person has never witnessed it first hand and how that Jungian thought pattern also contributes to relationships.

(Har, har: sophisticated country mice we are).

The levels of awesome in the Where the Wild Things Are trailer are too high to not post, even though virtually every blog on the web today is posting about it.  And if you haven’t read the book, or its been so long since you’ve read it (as it is for me), you can watch it. (I highly suggest you BUY the book, because that’s something that should be in everyone’s collection). So, go. Do.

You know, the expression “hitting the wall,” where you’ve been going and doing something for so long your mind breaks a little, and refuses to let you go any further? My brain did that to me yesterday.

I could not get a single word down that I didn’t think was totally worthless.

The term comes from running.  The first and only time I ever encountered it was my freshman year of high school during swim practice. There was a fifteen-year old Russian teammate of mine whose name I’m forgetting but he had a mustache swimming in front of me and suddenly went from a normal pace to almost a dead stop, literally in between strokes.  Yesterday was just one of those days where I was in a total funk where I could not focus and could not get anything done. Especially with Tim and Jude coming today, Monday had to be a big workday.

Just as I was working through my issues, getting my shit working again, a friend came up to me, who I had previously explained my plight.

“I think I’ve got it,” I say to him. “I think I’ve broken through the wall.”

“The wall?”  he asks.  “One time, my friends and I tried to see how fast a supermarket automatic door sensor reacts.  We did this by running as fast we could on the pad, but, of course, the pad wasn’t as fast as us.”

“That literally made my day.”

I guess you could say hitting the wall is the same as writer’s block, but the person writing this doesn’t believe in Writer’s Block.  I believe in bad days, but not being blocked, that means being stopped, literally not even able to type anything.  No, that was not what was wrong with me yesterday, it was not being able to write to my standard.  Sometimes I find its best to just write through the problem.  Walk away from the computer, and just sit down with a pad and pen somewhere far away from distraction and just write about the Funk you’re in. Being around people you can talk to helps, because then situations like this arise, people help in snapping you out.

Diablo Cody Posse Craves, Hates Your Attention. 

Tintin was one of the very first comics I ever read.  I remember my Dad coming back from business trips overseas and bringing me back Tintin and Asterisk books.  I was either eleven or twelve when the series, (title credits here) premiered on HBO.  I think Steven Spielberg was the producer then too.  When it was announced a year or so ago that Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson would bring the series to the big screen, and it would be written by DOCTOR WHO resident genius, Steven Moffat, I was on cloud nine.

I think Tintin was probably one of the very first comics I ever read, because long before the series premiered on HBO I think I had read all of the books.  And could have been one of the very first instances that got me thinking about being a journalist, or a writer for a living, because the main character of Herge’s works was a kid not much older than me and was a reporter.  Its easy for me to say that I wanted to have adventures like him, though at this age of 28, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to run into any Yetis in Tibet.

One of my recent stories for Splash Page involved Steven Spielberg finishing principal photography, and Peter Jackson taking over for post-production making it a unique relationship. Spielberg, gets the sole directing credit, and Jackson is just a producer whereas he’s handling the editing, the special effects and the new technology that he and his WETA studio in New Zealand are developing.  Spielberg handles the actors, and does it in 32 days, but Jackson works on the rest of the film for 18 months.  Pretty interesting.

David Aja, from an interior panel of Daredevil #116. Copyright Marvel Comics, March 2009.

David Aja previously worked with Brubaker on IRON FIST.  When the he, Brubaker, and Fraction left that book I’ve been quite eager to see where Aja would pop up next.  So when I picked up Daredevil #116 this week, and saw his name in the credits, I bounced with glee since its been so long since I’d seen anything by him. This month’s banner is my favorite panel from that Daredevil issue.  Aja is one of my favorite artists working today.

I figure its best to add some background to this panel. This issue featured the Kingpin, and where he’s been since the death of his wife. The entire arc, starting with this issue, is about his return to New York and is named “Return of the King.”

image via Slashfilm

You’re probably sick and tired of that title, with the various blog posts around the web this week reviewing the upcoming film. But I figured I would take the time to write about my experience with the book, the upcoming film, and the cool as shit story I did on it.

Sunday, while walking home from brunch in Alphabet City with my girlfriend we wandered past some graffiti, that I immediately sent to my scrapbook on Tumblr.  Monday morning, my picture had gotten quite popular and was being picked up by other Tumbleblogs expressing sightings of the graffiti throughout lower Manhattan.  I figured this was news and brought the story to my excellent editor, Rick Marshall.  My story on the graffiti for Splash Page was posted last night, and questioned whether it was viral marketing or some rabid fan-boys. By this morning, the story was a top hit on Google News.

If viral marketing was indeed involved, the company would have to go great lengths to get permission from the city to tag a telephone booth near Union Square, while the tag found in Chelsea was on the side of a restaurant. I’d assume it would be difficult to get the restaurant owner to agree to that one.

Better yet, is the graffiti a product of something more like the controversial “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” viral marketing campaign that hit Boston back in 2007?

One kind of hopes, though, that it’s the work of one — or more — comics fans who just like “Watchmen” that much.

While we probably won’t get any answers about the graffiti’s origins, any chance to show off a comics in-joke posted in a public forum is worth mentioning.

Finding this graffiti was pretty much a dream for me.  Throughout the escalation leading up to this film, I was surprised that the tag wasn’t showing up around Manhattan.  So, when wandering back to my girlfriend’s apartment in Chelsea, seeing it in a number of locations tickled my bone.

I have fond memories of this book, something I’ve read at least once a year since my sophomore year of high school.  That year was a big time for me in terms of liking comics and at that point started reading Starman and Sandman Mystery Theatre.  My computer teacher, had given me the single issues of Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns that year.  Though I was mesmerized by the brilliant Dave Gibbons covers, I’ve always felt the work itself really gave a very deep cinematic feel to it. No matter what Doug Wolk says that saying a comic has cinematic qualities is a disingenuous statement, that was the first impression I had of the comic.  I attribute this thought that at the time, I was deeply involved in making student films with my Media Tech class which my computer teacher was involved with. I made a music video of Bush’s “Greedy Fly” off their Razorblade Suitcase album, a five minute scene from 1989’s “Batman” starring my mother as Vicki Vale, and a documentary about trying to get into Keith Richards’s house which was just down the street from my buddy’s.  Who is now an up-and-coming rap producer.  So, seeing Rorschach walk out of the cemetery in the second issue looked like I was part of a film.  And I’ve not been able to shake that feeling since reading it when I was fifteen.

I remember getting Ozymandias’s final solution being something completely different than anything I had previously read.  In the end, I felt like it was probably too smart for me at the time, and being an impatient fifteen year-old, skipped through “Tales from the Black Freighter,” and did not get other nuances. Though, I think that’s why most of us who continue to read the book, and worry about this film use the excuse that the work is so very much steaped in what it is: a comic book, that a film could not possibly grasp the book. Obviously, that’s something that is said about virtually every other adaptation, whether its a comic or not. Though I think using that excuse is grasping at a straw to not go see the movie as some people are saying.  I’m really looking forward to seeing this movie, but definitely have my shortcomings on it, I reside in the fact that at least it will get people to read the book. And that’s a Big Success in my mind than whether the movie is any good.